TRS 2009 Patch taking FOREVER

<rant>

It is now 1730 here. I attempted to start TRS2009 at approximately 1400 this afternoon. It told me a patch was available and, naive as I must be, I told it to go ahead a patch the program.

Here I sit, three and a half hours later and it is STILL trying to patch my program. About an hour ago, a very slim slice of green began peeking out from the left of the progress bar. Every ten minutes or so, it will advance a pixel.

Does anyone know just how long this process will take? Will I have to leave it running all night? What on earth can be taking so long to patch a simple program?

I'm sorry I can't give you the start build number - nor can I tell you what build this patch will (eventually) produce.

Vista Home Premium SP2

</rant>

Bill

Hi Bill,

They are making changes to the built-in items in the .ja files so they have to uncompress the files, make the changes and then compress the files again. Depending on the speed of your PC this can take about thirty minutes to an hour on a bare install set of assets. Then the size of your local folder adds to the time too.

William

Well, I have 3G of RAM, an Athlon dual-core 4450e @ 2.3Ghz and a TB with around 850Gb free hard drive. I absolutely cannot imagine even the uncompress/compress cycle taking that long. Of course, it is entirely possible that the patcher is doing only one asset at a time - uncompress, change, and compress - then moving to the next asset and doing the same thing. That's pretty inefficient though.

Bill

I'm in the same boat... enjoying my new copy of TS2009 Update Edition.

We are at 2.5hrs on my quad core and counting... with no hope in sight for tonight. I guess we will have to leave the computer running all night again.

But hey; there's always tommorrow, right?

(That's what we said last night, when we started the download.)

I always check Task Manager, Processes, to see if it's working.
Work's for me, and saves wasted hours, and mental anguish.

I usually run TM side-by-side to any installer/patcher. What is being indicated is that the patcher is getting a little CPU every 2 or 3 seconds. While the patch was downloading (at just over 3 or 4KB incidentally) my Networking tab showed a pulse of activity every 4 seconds.

I have relatively little running in the background when I update/patch/install because I know background tasks will slow things down.

The progress bar is up to around 50% now - at four and a half hours.

Bill

Are you running your patch strait from the web site, or do you download it to your desktop and start from there?

my patch seemed to take a long time; however once it finaly gave me a sliver of green; it seemed to speed up a bit. I would have liked if they had given us more details as to what it was doing; or atleast a % that had enough decimal points to make us feel like it was progressing.

peter

I think if you have a lot of downloads in your local folder that is what is causing the long periods. I moved my local folder out did a clean install of 09 and used the patch from the new installation build. It installed very quickly, then deleted the local folder and moved mine back in. Deleted the tdx file and had a rebuild and repair and its fine.

It finally finished at 1945. that's a total of 5.75 hours. Totally unreasonable for a patch. I would have just released a completely new product instead of trying to patch anything.

I also agree that some sort of textual percentage (with the requisite decimal points) that does indeed show progress would be nice to have. A green line, advancing a pixel at a time, does not inspire confidence that the patcher is, in fact, running.

Bill

Hi HiBaller

There are a number of things that normally should be done when installing SP2. First is to disconnect your internet connection and shut down all programs running in the back ground (and don't use the computer).

Another is to run in safe mode for the installed.

And you should also try cleaning out the temp folder.

As for making it another version of Trainz, we preferred to release it as a free service instead of a complete new edition of Trainz which would require people to purchase. Yes, it would have been easier to do, but at what cost?

For the issue, the update needs to make updates to a number of built-in assets, as well as a large list of other fixes. To update the built-in assets we need to decompress the ja file, then edit the assets, then re-compress the ja file. This does require a large amount of space on the hard drive/the temp folder (and so on), which means it can take a long time to go through. I do agree, 5 hours is a long time, however we do recommend running the patch overnight. We also don't recommend using the computer whilst the patch is running.

Zec removing the internet connection is kind of unrealistic as the way Hiballer did it was to ok an autoupdate. That means you have to download the patch first then process the patch.

Your reccomendation would defeat the process. Just an obsevation.

Zec:

As Nickel says, I simply OK'd a notice from the auto-updater. I had no opportunity to disconnect the internet as that is how the update gets to me. I also cannot run in safe mode because, again, I had no warning before downloading. My Temp folder is cleaned regularly every time I get ready to do any install - but, yet again, I had no warning.

I must say though that whatever you use to decompress/recompress must really be slow. I have both ZIP and RAR programs that can encapsulate well over 1 or 2 GB of data in under 30 seconds. I can't imagine why your method would take so long.

The update is finally done now. You can bet your bippy that I'm never going to OK another auto-update.

Bill

I downloaded the patch and then installed it. The whole process took about an hour. The green bar barely moved for about 40 minutes, and then it was suddenly done. I am using a stock hp pavilion with 2 gig of memory. I did turn off my av software after the d/l.
Loren

SP2

Mine took 20 hours with the same method as Zec Murphy be patient

I am not sure when this patch was released, but, from the posts here, it was at LEAST a week ago.

Why wasn't the digital file patched ALREADY?!?! And how do you explain that ANY patch can take over 5 hours to do??

I am running a Quad Core 2.33 with 8gig ram(which blows away your RECOMMENDED config). How can you justify the patch taking 5hrs on a machine this good AND it taking 5 hours on an machine that only meets the min requirements?

That sounds like you have PROGRAMMED the patch to take that long, not that it just does take that long.

If this is the way you trat your customers....I am thinking that you are NOT a business that I want to deal with.

slower than a month of sundays.

:'(I gave up on the auto d/l for the patch. 7 hours waiting and I just spat the dummy and erased the patch file. Went to run trainz and the whole shooting box was corrupt. Deleted the entire auran directory direct from my HDD and re installed from scratch. I the did a manual d/l of the patch file and left it to run this morning (7.35am NZ time and about 2pm it finally completed). My hardware is AMD athlox x64 cpu at 2.5 Ghz. 2 mb ram etc. Trainz 09 has got to be the slowest version and the most bugged version yet. When ever I try to connect to the d/l server as I get this message "Unable to download, the server appears to be full, please try again later" well later has been and gone at least 15 times today. I remain firm on my comment from when I first purchased TRS09 (A waste of my money and a bigger waste of my time) Sorry Guy's but I sat patiently and waited for service pack 2 and now I find that most of the same problems occur. BTW, I have tried TRS09 on 2 other computers that are capable of running TRS09 and Yes, I still have problems, So does my Son who has also spent money on TRS09 and has a more powerful computer than mine (He is a fanatical gamer). What really peeves me off is that my first class ticket is just wasting away. More money down the pipe. :n:.

re turning off the antivirus.

Why? should the Av be turned off when installing an update. My system is used both work purposes and pleasure. I design and maintain Websites and there is no way in hell that I will even connect to the net without having the Av on and an even bigger no way in hell that I will install any software without the Av doing its bit during an install. Too much to risk, too much to loose. If TRS09 best suits a machine not running an AV program, I have to ask WHY? is it a virus in disguise? sure acts like one sometimes.

Relick said:

Why? should the Av be turned off when installing an update. My system is used both work purposes and pleasure. I design and maintain Websites and there is no way in hell that I will even connect to the net without having the Av on and an even bigger no way in hell that I will install any software without the Av doing its bit during an install. Too much to risk, too much to loose. If TRS09 best suits a machine not running an AV program, I have to ask WHY? is it a virus in disguise? sure acts like one sometimes.

Click to expand...

Because AV can block some of the installation process; causing an improper installation; and the program to not work properly. Actually Turning AV off during installation is a recommended procedure by almost every software developer.

peter

edit: If your worried about being connected to the internet while installing with your AV off. download the patch manually (see the FAQ section of the 09 forums) then turn off our internet (unplug the cable/disable your wireless card) install the patch then turn your internet & AV back on.

PerRock said:

Because AV can block some of the installation process; causing an improper installation; and the program to not work properly. Actually Turning AV off during installation is a recommended procedure by almost every software developer.

peter

edit: If your worried about being connected to the internet while installing with your AV off. download the patch manually (see the FAQ section of the 09 forums) then turn off our internet (unplug the cable/disable your wireless card) install the patch then turn your internet & AV back on.

Click to expand...

PerRock is bang on, and not only that, even if the AV doesn’t corrupt the installation files, it will check every file that the update patch alters, taking twice or three times longer than it should.